Complaints and calls for service on gravel roads have steadily increased throughout Weld County since 2011.

Year Grader Division service calls

2011 603

2012 661

2013 727

2014 325*

*Year to date.

Source: Weld County Department of Public Works.

It was a nearly

$700,000

lesson.

For Weld County, when EOG Resources discovered "Jake," the well that kick-started the boom in oil and gas exploration and development in Weld, and brought all sorts of interest in drilling the surrounding area in the northern part of the county, that meant getting the road up to speed.

So they paved Weld County Road 89 in 2010 — five miles, at a cost of $688,003.

Then companies started rilling some dry holes out there and moved on, but the annual maintenance costs on the rural northern Weld road haven't gone away.

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"County Road 89 was our big life lesson," said Janet Lundquist, traffic engineer for Weld County. "It had 1,000 trips per day, so we said it should be paved. In less than a year, it was gone. Now we have a road in a remote area that we have to maintain. … Now, it's down to 79 trips per day. … That's why we're really gun-shy about paving roads" to accommodate oil and gas.

The Weld transportation system has experienced the No. 1 impact from the surge in and gas activity since Jake was discovered in 2010.

At present, the county has 3,700 miles of roadways, 2,300 of which are gravel roads, and many of those have become major haul routes for the oil and gas industry as it travels from drilling pad to drilling pad.

COUNTY SPENDING

With the county being so flush with money from oil and gas revenue — $148.5 million in property taxes from Noble and Anadarko alone, or nearly 33 percent of a all taxes paid to the county last year — some wonder if roads are getting their fair share of work and maintenance.

"I look at all this money from oil and gas, and the roads aren't getting any better," said Steve Wells, who owns 32,000 acres northeast of Greeley. "We had enough tax base 30 to 40 years ago to build all the roads. Now look at how huge our tax base is, and we can't maintain the ones we have. There is a money leak, somewhere. There has to be."

While the oil giants kicked in that $148 million in their 2012 tax share, ($162 million for 2013) that money went to schools, municipalities, fire districts, library districts, as well as the county. The added assessed value from oil and gas offsets other classes of property taxes, such as residential and commercial, if the mill levy by the various taxing entities is reduced, said Weld County's interim finance director, Don Warden.

In recent years, due to the increase in oil and assessed values, oil and gas reduced the county's mill levy from 22.038 mills to 16.804 mills. The county anticipates a further reduction next year. Last year, residential property taxes were driven down 24 percent from 2012, according to county figures.

Next year, Weld's road and bridge budget will hit $74 million, representing an $18.4 million increase from 2014, Warden reported. Last year, the public works budget of $55.58 million represented 22 percent of the county's overall budget, comprising the largest portion of the budget, followed only by public safety at 20 percent.

"We've been trying to put as much resources into transportation and infrastructure as we can," Warden said.

Of course, not all of that money goes to fix the latest pothole-infested road the minute a resident complains.

The list of county road projects competing for the extra money is rather large given Weld's geographic size. The next few years, transportation money will be concentrated on Weld County Road 49, which has been deemed by county commissioners as a top priority. It has become a major trucking route for the industry, and is deemed a safety hazard.

Next year, $25 million will be set aside to begin work to widen Weld 49, and other improvements on the road, that will be designed to take traffic off U.S. 85. (The entire project is $125 million over the next three to four years, Warden said.) Right of way and utility improvements along that stretch will cost $10 million. A couple of intersection improvements along 49 will run the county $7.5 million.

Other transportation projects include:

» $8 million will dedicated to the HAUL route program (unchanged from last year), specifically for roads enduring a high volume of truck traffic from the oil and gas industry.

» The county will shell out almost $4.5 million next year to repair four bridges across the county; and $1.1 million on two intersections along Colo. 392, Warden said.

He added that the public works budget has almost doubled in the last four to five years, while other county services haven't.

STATE OF THE ROADS

On any given day, a Weld County road is ruining someone's day with wash-boarding and ruts and potholes, mostly due to increased traffic from trucks, cars, and tankers. This summer's heavier-than-normal rain hasn't helped.

Most of it's due to oil and gas traffic. Complaints come in at random and have slowly been increasing since 2011, just after the boom got started. From 2011-12, complaints for grading on county roads increase 9.6 percent to 661; complaints rose again another 9.9 percent to 727 in 2013.

This year, complaints are sitting at 325; not quite on track to surpass last year.

"We hear complaints about roads all over the place," Lundquist said. "We'll get a call, and go out and make a repair, and we'll go another month and maybe get another call. That's our day-to-day."

One of those complaints would come from Jamie Pesgrove, who lives about three miles east of Ault. She's watched oil and gas traffic beat up the sandy roads in her rural neighborhood in the past, and she expects more to come with a new drilling project about to start next month.

"I'm frustrated, because when they put that first well in a half-mile west, County Road 43 is paved and 80 is not, so all these trucks were pulling off of payment to gravel, and they created several holes that are three feet around and two feet deep. One of the neighbors was kind enough to fill the holes with dirt from his yard, because they wouldn't fix it.

"The county's attitude toward us is we're non-entities because we have less than 200 people that use our road," Pesgrove said.

She said her road does get graded, and often. But traffic a mile to the south of her isn't graded so much and oil traffic has made it unbearable. Neighbors use the road in front of her house as a detour.

She and Wells both complain about the narrowing of the gravel roads, which have deep culverts on each side, making it treacherous to share the road with heavy equipment, as there is no shoulder.

"Every time it rains, it washes the road away, and the poor guy who tries to keep my road together pulls it out of the borrow pit," Pesgrove said. "Now, my road is a foot taller than it used to be and three feet narrower."

Even truckers are starting to complain. One trucker, who hauls water to oil fields just south of the Wyoming border north of New Raymer, said Weld County Road 129 has the potential to create fatalities.

The trucker, who would only say his name is Mike, said 129 had grown so bad, truckers were jumping off the road to avoid the potholes that weren't being filled. Traffic slows down to 10 mph in some spots because potholes and washboard are so bad. When the road is graded, it takes just a week to be torn up again. "The amount of traffic out there is unbelievable," he said. "We're just tired of it. Some will rattle your teeth."

While Noble Energy has agreed to help maintain much of that stretch, it is a county responsibility, said Curtis Hall, grader services division supervisor for the county. At present, Hall has 27 graders who each maintain about 70 miles of gravel roads throughout the county.

"We put it in the priority list," Hall said. "Someone's perception of that priority may be different than ours. We continually try to evaluate what operators are doing and make sure they're efficient."

Weld 129 is a road that has the traffic count now (at 1,063 trips per day, up from 155 in 2011) to merit a paving, but Hall and Lundquist look back the lesson of Weld 89.

"The oil and gas industry is dynamic," Lundquist said. "Where they are today isn't necessarily where they're going to be a month from now."

The county has the same amount of road grading employees it had five years ago, as well.

"We can't just bring on a whole bunch of staff and have it all drop out, either," Lundquist said. "We don't want to waste taxpayer dollars by having staff that isn't utilized. It's a tightrope in the sense of making sure we have enough to get the job done."

Weld works with oil and gas companies in the field, as well, who have their own crews and materials to fix road problems. The larger companies, such as Noble Energy, Anadarko, Whiting Petroleum and Bonanza Creek have helped immensely, Lundquist said.

"But we have a lot of small mom-and-pop operations that may have five wells in all of Weld County," Lundquist said. "We'll come out and find out there's a gaping hole in the road way, and they hadn't gotten any permits, and we've had complaints, and we talk to the rig operators to find out who they're working for. At one point, we had 50 operators in the county, and they come and go."

"We're lucky though," Lundquist said. "We have a lot of staff that pays attention and drives around, and the citizens. They're No. 1. They're our eyes on the roads. We have 4,000 square miles and 3,000 plus roads we take care of. We need our citizens."

While the county works to keep up with grading roads, and problems associated with ones near high concentrations of oil and gas activity, it also must maintains highways, paved roads and bridges.

As roads become paved, costs go up. The average gravel road in Weld costs from $1,200 a year to $8,600 a year to maintain, depending on the number of trips per day, as well as the use of magnesium chloride, which is used to counter dust. Paved roads cost $25,000 a year to maintain, Lundquist said.

The county is working on a new system of paving that involves milling in concrete with reclaimed asphalt to pave roads at a cheaper cost. The result is a much harder surface with less work, Lundquist said. The county also is experimenting with its use of magnesium chloride, mixing it in with gravel as opposed to applying it as a topical spray.

"We're changing the way we approach roads, and trying to change our techniques for the betterment of the public," Lundquist said. "And we're learning every step of the way."

Additional growth, not only in oil and gas, but in dairy, ag and residential, has added some stress on paved roads as well, Lundquist said.

"On pavement where we have expected a 20-year pavement life, we are now getting eight to 10 years," she said. "We're now reconstructing roads that we were not planning on for another five years. And those are far more expensive for us to maintain than gravel."

An added issue this last year came with the flooding that washed out roads and bridges along Weld riverbanks. Weld officials say they're now mostly caught up with the additional stress to its budgets and personnel time from the flooding. Warden estimated with FEMA putting up 75 percent of the cost of reconstruction of roads and bridges, Weld will get away with paying about $30 million to cover the flooding damage.

"It's a challenge," Warden said of maintaining roads for the one of the largest counties in the country. "We're trying to respond to the challenge. There's no way we can have the kind of impact we have in this county with oil and gas without people noticing it. You'll notice roads are busier, there are more heavy haul trucks. When it's dry they're stirring up dust, when it rains, there's potholes. We're trying to respond to that as best we can."

Weld road complaints

Complaints and calls for service on gravel roads have steadily increased throughout Weld County since 2011.